


Risky Venture

by faithfulcynic



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-14 00:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1245607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithfulcynic/pseuds/faithfulcynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she sees the motel, the first defendable-looking building in the last two hours, she pulls over and decides to call it a day.</p><p>Carol intends to stay one day, maybe two. </p><p>She ends up staying six months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Risky Venture

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after "Indifference." I had meant to get it posted before WD came back from its break, but it took me forever to write so now it is AU as of "Inmates."

She drives away, but doesn't go far because, well, where does she have to go? There is nothing in her future, everything in her past, and, now, about half a tank in her present. When she sees the motel, the first defendable-looking building in the last two hours, she pulls over and decides to call it a day.

Carol intends to stay one day, maybe two. 

She ends up staying six months. 

****

The motel is made up of two buildings laid out in an inverted l-shape, each with eight rooms behind faded orange doors, rusted metal railings that guard the upper floors (and which meet at one rickety staircase), and windows that are thin and frosted in dirt. 

It is basically a dump; a place one stops out of desperation or to penny-pinch during a vacation. Ed would have approved, Carol thinks.

She confirms the number of rooms on the first day when she finds the motel office, the key-hanger behind the desk holding old-fashioned room keys with red diamond tags numbering one through sixteen. (Number seven is missing, but Carol decides to leave it alone because it isn’t worth the risk). Every motel room is papered in dying flowers, drooping and bubbling under time and heat. Every room has the same lumpy mattress, rickety bed frame, too-small side table, and tiny dresser. 

Carol spends the first night in Number Fourteen, on the upper floor, but only manages to catch a few minutes of sleep and by morning she is too weary to move on, but too wired to stay still. She ends up raiding the upper rooms of the first building for supplies – there isn’t much, no surprise there – and pulling four mattresses from the bottom rooms to place below the balcony in case she needs a quick escape. She tucks the car out of sight beside the office. 

The next day Carol searches the rest of the rooms in her building and props a ladder she finds in the maintenance room against the balcony.

The day after that she starts searching the rooms in the other building and, out of necessity, takes care of the occupant in Number Seven. She is lucky – it turns out to be a suicide by headshot; she only has to drag the body away from the motel and bury it.

By the end of the week, Carol has barricaded the top of the stairs with furniture from the rooms and has only had to deal with one Walker. She has an idea of how to herd other Walkers away from the hotel using a canal made of furniture and some abandoned automobiles. She thinks she might be able to start a garden. She thinks she’s going to be okay. 

But night after night Carol sits on her bed in Number Fourteen and tries to decide where she is going with all this. What is she doing? Carol isn’t really sure. It’s risky, putting down roots, and this place is riskier than most. It isn’t concrete walls and chain-link fences, it isn’t safe, but she can’t seem to will herself to go any further, or even think about moving on. So Carol sits on the bed and eats stale granola bars, or nothing at all, and tries to plot out a future. 

****

Carol lets the woman stay in exchange for a can of food. “One night,” she says and lets her choose whatever motel room she wants in the other building. The woman chooses a room on the bottom floor and Carol gives her about three months to live. (Although Carol is trying to renovate a motel so who is she to judge?) The woman leaves in the morning and Carol never asks her name.

The second visitor stays for a week because he helps her demolish the staircase and then together they create the canal. The man’s name is James, he is funny and she enjoys the company, but while Carol may be building… something here, she isn’t ready to start a new family; her track record there is pretty lousy. 

Her next guest is a drunken asshole, but is easily dissuaded when she points her gun at his crotch.

Carol hears about the prison from the next few people that pass through and feels strangely empty. She wonders if maybe it was inevitable, if they were foolish to stay in one place so long, and if things would have gone differently if she were still there. She wonders who made it (hopefully the children, maybe Glenn and Maggie, probably Rick) and who didn’t (possibly Herschel, probably Beth.) Daryl is the only one she’s sure of. 

Her sixth guest refuses to leave so there is one more body to add to the burn-and-bury pile the next morning. 

Maybe Rick is right. Maybe she isn’t a person you can trust.

****

Three months later, Carol is working on what will (hopefully) be a vegetable garden when she hears an engine. Her heart knows the sound and her head says ‘stop,’ but she runs out in front anyway and it _is_ Daryl, riding up on his motorcycle and stopping just before the motel office. 

Carol is torn between a sudden onslaught of relief and panic, but she manages to smile as he gets off of his bike. 

"Hey," he says. 

There are so many things she wants to tell him – about the last few months here, about her newfound career in motel management, about how she’s grown to enjoy it, and about how good it is to finally see him – but it all gets tangled in her head. “They were suffering,” she blurts out instead.

"Uh huh," he says, like he doesn't believe her, which is unsettling. Daryl looks around, a quirk of a smile come and gone. "Home sweet home?"

Carol laughs, even though it feels forced. “Something like that.” Over the next few hours she tells him a bit about the motel and inquires about the others (she is sorry to hear about Herschel) and Daryl tells her a bit about their new camp and his supply run routine. It is familiar, even a bit nice, but there is an underlying tension to the conversation and Carol is pretty sure that tension is the result of her dragging two bodies outside and then setting them on fire. 

"How much per night?" he finally asks with a smirk.

“How much you got?” she retorts. 

They haggle, finally settling on a can of peaches and his help refortifying the canal. And then because she can, because she likes to see him blush, and because he always lets her, Carol makes a crack about Number Fourteen having the biggest bed and how there are cheaper ways for him to pay his way. 

Daryl doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a close thing. 

They talk through the night, about everything and nothing (except, of course, about what Carol did) and then Daryl leaves in the morning.

***

Two days later he returns with a plastic jug of water and another can of peaches. They still don’t talk about what happened. 

This becomes routine over the next few weeks – Daryl visits, they work on the motel, they talk (and don’t talk), and then he leaves again. She looks forward to every visit, but knows that sooner or later this tension is going to spill over, that Daryl’s patience is going to break. Because while they’ve both grown over the past year, Carol still knows how to retreat and Daryl is _always_ going to call someone on their bullshit.

***

She gives shelter to a boy who is probably only a few years older than Carl. It is the first time she considers letting someone stay, even though the responsibility of his welfare is something she absolutely doesn’t want. The boy leaves before she can offer, however, and Carol breathes a sigh of relief. 

***

“What the hell is a duvet?” Daryl asks. He sounds offended that such a thing even exists. 

Carol shrugs. “Just a fancy name for a quilt, I guess. I always wanted one but …” She doesn’t finish the sentence because Daryl already knows that most of the things she never had were because of Ed. “The point is that these comforters are sad looking.”

The motel comforters _are_ sad, thin and faded with a blue and pink abstract print that is a strange combination with the ugly floral wallpaper. She doesn’t seriously consider going to find new ones, however, just wishes for them in a way most home owners might think about upgrading - with equal parts daydream and wistfulness. 

Home, she thinks and looks again around the room. She wonders if that’s true.

Daryl frowns at the bedspread, but says nothing. 

***

Her next guest gives her a black eye. Daryl arrives to find Carol marching him away from the motel in the direction of the pit, her gun at his back. Daryl nocks an arrow, but she shakes her head. “My problem.”

That night Daryl gives her a green stone. Carol thinks sadly of flowers and their fragility and then smiles. She likes the weight of the stone in her hand. It feels solid, unbreakable, and like the start of something new. 

But two weeks later, Daryl finally throws his hands up in exasperation. “When you going to stop this shit, Carol?”

She takes a deep breath, ready with her answer, but Daryl growls. “I know. Everyone knows.”

Carol’s mind stutters. She had told them not to tell anyone, that it was better to keep it a secret. But Carol supposes you can never take into account the unpredictability of the preteen, especially during the apocalypse. 

“It doesn’t change anything,” she finally says. “I was trying to save lives; I just didn’t think Mika would …” Carol breaks off in a huff. “I was trying to make her strong. Give her the chances that ... but it doesn’t matter because Rick was right - Karen and David might have lived if not for me.”

Daryl scowls. “Rick can kiss my ass.”

She laughs, but quickly sobers. “Everyone knows?”

He almost sighs. “It was a big fucking mess, Carol. After we finally got everyone back together, Mika told everyone what she did and Tyrese lost it. Then Lizzie pulled a goddamned gun on him …”

_“What?”_

He makes a face. “Girl’s been cutting up rats too.”

“Jesus,” Carol says. She had thought she’d only had to worry about Mika; remembers telling Lizzie that she had to be strong. Carol thinks it only confirms what she already knew – that she was never meant to be anyone’s mother. 

“Like a damned science school experiment,” he agrees. “Sasha finally talked everyone down and Tyrese realized he wasn’t going to kill a little girl. And Rick…” Daryl shrugs.

“Rick blamed himself,” Carol says.

He nods. “Yeah. But we got it sorted out. So I go looking for you, finally find you, and you have all this,” he says, waving his hand at the motel. “And you never once asked if you could come back. Not once. So what the hell you doing here, Carol?”

“I’m …” Carol hedges, trying to find some kind of answer that makes sense. “I’m seeing if I’m strong enough to be on my own.”

Daryl shifts his weight, which she suspects is to keep him from stalking forward. “You are. Come home.”

There is that word again, she thinks. Has she built herself a home? It certainly is more permanent than she originally intended, and she has no future plans of moving on. 

“I … I can’t.”

“Why?”

Carol thinks about all that has happened and of whether or not she is punishing herself. And maybe she is, she thinks. But there is more to it than that. Carol could have gone back, she could have tried to explain better to Rick, tried to beg Tyrese’s forgiveness, could have watched and waited on the outside of that fence until they needed her again… but she didn’t. 

Regardless of what it cost her, Carol likes her newfound independence and she likes this place. It is hers and hers alone and she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do. 

“Because I don’t want to,” Carol says and means it. 

Daryl is disappointed and he tries to convince her to leave, but there are no angry words between them. She thinks it’s because he understands what it is like to need freedom. 

They spend the night talking and then he leaves in the morning like always. 

***

His visits are shorter over the next few weeks, but he leaves her another green stone, along with some rounds of ammo. 

The next time he visits Carol gives him a bicycle horn with a half deflated rubber bulb. 

Daryl snorts loudly; she considers it a win.

***

In the end it isn’t Walkers. It isn’t fire or weather or even theft at gunpoint. Carol goes on a supply run – because she can’t live off of granola bars and canned peaches – and when she returns a group of people has taken her motel.

Carol watches from her car and… feels tired mostly. She wonders if it was fate, if it was inevitable.

I’ve built you a home, she thinks. 

Carol leaves the motel behind, drives, and wonders what to do next. She isn’t surprised when she sees a motorcycle in her rearview mirror. She pulls over and waits till he appears at her window. 

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hey.”

They stare at each other for a moment and then he raps his knuckles on the top of her car. “Feel like taking a ride?”

Carol considers. “Where?” she finally asks.

Daryl shrugs. “Wherever we want,” he says and Carol likes the sound of that. 

****

Later that evening, Daryl pulls a well-worn quilt from his backpack. “I know it’s not exactly what you wanted,” he starts, but she shushes him. It is perfect and she tells him so. 

Then, because she can’t help herself, she mentions the chances of hypothermia are lessened when two people share body heat under a blanket. She even bats her eyelids. 

Daryl rolls eyes. 

“Sorry, pookie,” Carol says with flicker of a smile.


End file.
